Winter and Hey Rosetta!

A winter break in Ottawa visiting friends and old haunts included tickets to see Hey Rosetta! with Stars at the NAC. We were really excited to see Hey Rosetta! especially after a music buying spree at Compact Music (fortunate exchange rates). Southam Hall was completely full - combination of 2 different bands' worth of music fans - and whilst Hey Rosetta received slightly muted appreciation initially, this soon changed to lots of whooping.

The set list (with help from Ottawa Citizen's review) included: Soft Offering..., Gold Teeth, What Arrows, Young Glass, Neon Beyond, Harriet, Kintsukuroi, Welcome as well as older songs Yer Spring, Red Heart. Excellent performance, though with a bit less banter than I might have expected - and it was good to hear new songs as well as familiar songs (since our holiday apartment didn't have a turntable we went to the show without having heard new album Second Sight).

Having never heard much of Stars before, we listened to a few tracks on Soundcloud and thought OK, we'll stay for their set. Bad decision. Three tracks in we were so bored! There was also something wrong with Stars' sound mix which didn't help.

More pictures also available at PhotogMusic, along with shots from The Peptides' recent show - which in the end we didn't manage to see....

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Angela Hewitt Week, 14th-20th May 2012

I just received information from a friend about Angela Hewitt Week in Ottawa, 14th-20th May as declared by Mayor Jim Watson. Ms Hewitt is performing with Chamber Players of Canada on Friday 18th May; there will also be An Afternoon With Angela Hewitt on 20th May at the National Arts Centre hosted by the Canadian Friends of the Trasimeno Music Festival .

Pigeon Funk

Notes on a very random purchase. Earlier today I acquired Venetian Snares 'Rossz Csillag Alatt Sz ü letett ' purely on the basis of the language and artwork. Its certainly something different - and most definitely not pop. After a bit of searching: Venetial Snares is, according to Wikipedia, the performing name of Aaron Funk, who seems to specialise in experimental tracks in odd time signatures. Article here . The sleeve notes for this album (whose title is Hungarian for 'Born under a bad star') poses the question: what if, for just a day, we could both be pigeons? Interessant. Apparently this concept (a day in the life of a Hungarian pigeon) is non-typical of Venetian Snares sound, but one could ask, does Mr Funk do 'typical'? On first listening, the sound of this CD mixes classical/traditional Hungarian sounds and breakbeats. but aside from that? Definitely a 'listen for yourself' artist; try the website , fan site or myspace .

The Venezuelan maestro comes to Cardiff

A highly anticipated evening of entertainment for M and I, we headed to St Davids Hall to see the conductor of the moment, Gustavo Dudamel , conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra . Highly entertaining, too, and the place was pretty full, though possibly not sold out. We had anticipated the first piece to be Antonio Estevez' 'Mediodia en el llano', but a last minute change meant the first work was (I believe - the posters up in the venue were rather short on info!) Berlioz' Roman Carnival. Initially we may have been a tad disappointed but the replacement work was excellently peformed, cue many smiles. Unfortunately, the smiles soon evaporated, as the second, and for us, least interesting piece, was Mozart's Piano Concert No.17 K453 with Emanuel Ax on piano. M described Ax as mellow, I described him as dull. That may be because neither of us are really into Mozart, but compared to previous visits to St Davids Hall to see pianists Noriko Ogawa and Freddy Kempf, we really...

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